SEOUL, Oct. 30 (UPI) — The wartime recruitment of Korean “comfort women” forced to serve in military brothels has become a point of contention less than three days before a rare bilateral summit between the South Korean president and the Japanese prime minister.
In an interview with Mainichi Shimbun and other Japanese newspapers, South Korea President Park Geun-hye had said, “It is important that the Japanese government accommodate the victims, and find a solution that makes sense to South Korean citizens,” Yonhap reported. Park added that she sincerely hoped the summit Monday would serve as an opportunity to settle the comfort woman issue by the end of the year.
The published statements drew a less than accommodating response from Tokyo on Friday. Japanese politician Koichi Hagiuda said, “Japan’s position on the comfort woman issue has not changed…talks must go ahead without preconditions.”
An unidentified Japanese official, however, said the summit would leave sufficient time to discuss all matters, and that arrangements are being made so that Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could engage in a “frank exchange of opinions” that does not exclude the issue of comfort women.
Other topics on the table include North Korea’s nuclear development and trilateral cooperation on security involving the two countries and the United States. Japan, a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership said South Korean interest in joining the multilateral trade cooperation could also be discussed.
South Korea and Japan are two of the United States’ closest allies in the Asia-Pacific, but issues arising from history and political rhetoric have brought relations between Seoul and Tokyo to a low point.
South Korean television network KBS reported different civic organizations were preparing rallies during Abe’s visit to Seoul. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and at least 30 other groups are planning to hold a rally to oppose Japan’s Self-Defense Forces policy on the Korean peninsula, and protest crimes against humanity committed during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945.
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